NASA's Mars exploration rover Opportunity uses its camera in 2011 to take this picture showing the rover's arm extended toward a light-toned rock.

Written by

Todd Halvorson
| Florida Today

NASA's Mars Opportunity rover is America's new champion for distance driving in space, and the enduring robotic geologist might set a world record in the coming months.

Six-wheeling around a Martian equatorial region once awash with water, the Opportunity rover this month eclipsed a U.S. distance record set by two Apollo astronauts driving a moon buggy around a lunar valley called Taurus-Littrow in December 1972.

Astronauts Harrison Schmitt and Eugene Cernan traveled 22.21 statute miles in a lunar surface rover during a three-day moon-stay that marked the end of the Apollo program. ...